Edinburgh Napier produces visors for frontline NHS staff

Edinburgh Napier University has started producing specially-designed visors to give health workers the protection they need when treating COVID-19 patients.

Colin Malcolm, a workshop technician at the Merchiston campus, began making the face shields using a laser cutter just hours after hearing about nurses trying to make their own from cotton before going on shift.

The masks are made of strips of polypropylene sheet plastic fastened to a clear acetate visor to make sure the entire face is protected and are now being delivered to nurses and care workers on the frontline to make sure they are protected.

The quick turnaround production line was set up after Ruth Cochrane, Enterprise Lead for the School of Arts and Creative Industries, heard from a relative who works as a community nurse in Ayrshire that she had been trying to make her own surgical mask from fabric.

Ruth said:

“The design is rudimentary and the masks are reasonably disposable but they will work as a stop-gap measure until official supply lines get going and I don’t think there will be a shortage of people to deliver them to.

“I have given a batch to a community nursing team, and the efforts of Edinburgh Academy have led to requests from nurses, care homes and hospices.

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